57146Aircraft Sanitisation Verification Service (ASVS)ClosedFeasibility StudiesInnovate UKThe COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the grounding of the majority of the world's fleet of aircraft. As the pandemic is brought under control and travel is again possible, maximising safety will be paramount. Virus particles, e.g. COVID-19, can remain infectious in the air for hours and on surfaces up to days depending on the type of surface and the environmental conditions. In this context, in the future, airlines will place much greater importance on maintaining high standards of disinfection to prevent further dissemination and giving necessary reassurance to passengers. To keep travel costs at a reasonable level, it will be important to ensure that a disinfection process has been effective without increasing the "down time" of the aircraft. For rapidly disinfecting the whole of an aircraft interior, a technique known as "fogging" (i.e. spaying a thin mist of disinfectant in to the air, which then coats surfaces) is seen as critical for the future. The big issue with this is ensuring that the coverage is comprehensive. This project addresses this challenge. This five-month project will produce two key outputs. Novel, inexpensive, paper-based (biodegradable) patch sensors that can be distributed on a range of surfaces inside an aircraft before disinfection and that will change colour to show that the correct level of disinfection has been achieved. The patch sensors will use dyes that will change colour when they come in contact with the disinfectant used to clean the plane. The second aspect of the project will be the development of a reader, initially based on a smart phone platform, that can measure the colour and consequently determine the amount of disinfection. This can be displayed on the screen and sent to a central location that will record the results from all the sensors placed on that plane. The project will be delivered by Intercede Ventures Ltd, which comprises a team of former senior managers with the airline industry. Working with a UK-based sensor manufacture, a university, an international chemical distributor and partner airlines they will launch the product by the end of 2020\. The impact of the project will be huge in terms of passenger safety. In addition, it will help the airline and tourism industries recover from the COVID-19 crisis by giving airline passengers much needed confidence in the safety of air travel, as the world economy slowly starts to recover. A three month extension to the original project will enhance Intercede Ventures Ltd preparedness for marketing of this product by the end of 2020 and expand the market opportunities. This will be done by ensuring that the sensors respond to all disinfectants used in "fogging" and that the sensor reader, which operates from a mobile phone platform, is easy to use for people with few technical or IT skills. In addition, the manufacturing process for producing large numbers of the sensors will be planned with a manufacturing partner. Finally, further trials will take place to verify system operation and to provide evidence of the performance for potential customers. The overall impact of project remains the same, i.e. to ensure passenger safety and to support airlines to recover from the COVID-19 crisis, but this three month extension will allow Intercede Ventures to more rapidly penetrate a larger market, to both support company development and increase the level of impact on society and the economy.